Top Tips for Patient-Centred Care, and Solving ‘Wicked Problems’ in Healthcare, in the Words of a Patient Advocate
HIROC recently sat down with Anna Foat, a patient advocate with London, Ontario’s health team.
Anna specializes in tech, and she’s a patient partner on the coordinating council for the Ontario Health Team in London-Middlesex. She had lots to say, including the conundrums of “wicked problems” in healthcare, and simple fixes for more patient-centric care.
She is one of many regular, engaging guests in the healthcare sector we feature on Talk with HIROC, our weekly LinkedIn Live series.
When asked how she got into what she does, her answer was – “Unintentionally!”
“My husband had a severe injury for which he was prescribed narcotic opiates,” she said. “After a very long time of receiving care, he decided he wanted to taper off the opiates.”
This did not turn out to be easy.
After this experience, Anna started doing a series of radio interviews. Before she knew it, she was the go-to consultant for healthcare decision-makers in her area.
WICKED PROBLEMS
She’s also an instructor at the University of Western Ontario, where she teaches design thinking. This has helped her explore what she calls “wicked problems” in healthcare.
“There’s lots of wicked problems in healthcare,” she said. “The minute you fix something here, you inevitably break something there.”
The solution? “You really need to think about it from a system perspective,” she says. Taking the time to step back and look at the big picture of your healthcare conundrum works miracles.
She has a popular quote she likes to use when teaching:
“If I had an hour to solve my problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about possible solutions, and five minutes solving the problem.” She attributes this quote to Albert Einstein.
Anna adds that giving yourself time to think, without rushing to a solution, helps take some of the daunting mystery out of whatever situation your site may be in.
MAGIC WAND SOLUTIONS?
We asked Anna what she would do, if she could wave a magic wand at any facet of healthcare and instantly solve its problems.
While there of course is no “magic” solutions, she had the following ideas
- Understand that healthcare is collaborative. Very few people receive care from just one provider or professional – it’s a team effort. “When your team is able to communicate effectively, it’s obviously going to help them do their job,” she said.
- Use technology where it matters most. Anna says there’s lots of talk in the field about Artificial Intelligence – “all these very ‘sexy’ things, etcetera,” she joked – but tech is best when it simplifies our system. Anna says technology is urgently needed to make a single, centralized identity for patients. “Patients should be able to access their records with one identifier,” she said. “If I could wave my wand and have a federated, secure, digital identity, I’d do that.”
- Work with patients. Anna says patients get left out of important developments in healthcare, often without any ill intent. “Meetings have lots of jargon” she said. “And patients just come in at the end, for this ‘ta-da!’ moment.” But, new healthcare initiatives shouldn’t be built behind the “closed doors of the boardroom” she says. “Patients need to be involved right at the start.”
Anna also says there’s no denying how far we’ve come.
“We’ve gone from a very paternalistic healthcare system, to one that is really ready,” she said. “But change is hard, and this is a big change.”
By Julian Abraham, Communications and Marketing Associate, HIROC